© 2012 Francine Fortin, Louise Dupuis, Dominique Ronfet, Ginette Kavanaghfv, Normand Laperle
© 2012 Urantia Association of Quebec< /p>
¶ Who is listening to me? (part 2)
AS PROMISED IN MY last article published in the January 2012 issue of Réflectivité, here is the continuation of my column.
One of the greatest needs of human beings goes beyond being heard, that of being listened to and understood!
It is not knowledge, but rather attitudes that are necessary for listening, although some techniques are necessary. attitudes refer to ways of being and techniques are at the level of action.
In order to stimulate ourselves to listen, it is important to understand its benefits:
- At first, listening is part of good communication. That’s the difference between monologue and communicating.
- Listen to be listened to. To get to know the other and share our point of view, let’s give them the privilege of expressing themselves fully, by listening to them sincerely before speaking.
- The person we are listening to will feel it and we will thus gain their trust.
- By listening, we show our interest in understanding the other.
- Listening allows others to express themselves without fear of being judged.
- Listening allows the other to feel important and valued.
- By listening, we open our hearts to God by offering a gift of love, a token of appreciation of estimable value!
Now that we understand the importance and benefits of good listening, here are the necessary qualities of a good listener:
- There must be a sincere desire to listen to the other;
- A great will to change our old models, because we always need to give our opinion, our ideas, often tending to say what we think, without having taken the time to listen to the other’s point of view;
- Thus, a continuous effort and sustained concentration will be necessary, especially during the first authentic listening sessions;
- By forgetting our own thoughts, our internal dialogue, and by giving all our attention to the quality of our listening to the other, we demonstrate unlimited wisdom and infinite humility;
- We need to demonstrate a sincere and genuine interest, a warm respect and an open-mindedness to the opinion of others, even if it does not correspond to our values, in order to avoid the judgments*** which we too often tend to make hastily;
- Patience and Sensitivity are essential, in order to be in harmony with others, by adopting and accepting their rhythm and the different way in which they express themselves, which may differ from ours;
- Accept the silences of the other, let’s not try to fill the void that sets in. These silences are necessary to help the person to reflect, to think. Let’s cultivate patience with these necessary silences that sometimes make us uncomfortable;
- Empathy is a quality necessary for listening. It is the ability to put oneself in the place of others, to perceive what they feel. It is with this quality that we can understand the other without having experienced the same thing and to enter their own universe.
I hope that you feel better equipped, following this column, to immediately begin your authentic and different listening and that you will be able to share it with all the brothers and sisters you meet.
Until my next column, stay tuned!
“God has given us two ears and one mouth, that is why we must listen twice as much as we speak!”
Francine Fortin
¶ THE ADJUSTER’S DIFFICULTIES
IT IS THE RECONSTITUTION of our intentions and our motives which proves and supports our determinations for personal and individual change.
The persistence of a commitment to innovation through our ability to develop healthy habits of thought and through our ability to correct our behavioral problems. We must learn to adjust our thinking to divine thinking in order to maintain harmony with the Thought Adjuster. In this way we improve our personal and individual conduct by orienting ourselves toward readjusted ideals of life.
The human mind must be willing and mentally prepared to be taught as a child, to make moral choices, and to be born of the spirit. The UB tells us: [P. 1438 — §1] “Today, my son, you must be born again, restored as a man of faith, courage, and devoted service to men for the love of God. When you are thus readjusted in yourself to life, you will also be readjusted to the universe; you will be born again — born of the spirit — and henceforth your whole life will be one victorious accomplishment.”
We must die to our old material life in order to recreate ourselves, in order to form our new vehicle of life. This attitude of mental elevation contributes greatly to strengthening and solidifying our strength of character in our personality.
The human personality must be recreated spiritually, regenerated mentally, qualified for adaptation to the social environment. Morontia life transformations are realized through a series of consecrations of personal experiences, intellectual changes in an ideal of life. We must transcend the vicissitudes of ordinary life imprisoned in our minds, manifesting themselves as inner ailments or dis-ease. These ailments are like physical and mental poisons embedded in our material minds. These poisons are detrimental to our soul progress and to our conscious contact with our Thought Adjuster. The UB thus speaks of them: [UB 110:1.5] “All physical poisons greatly retard the efforts of the Adjuster to exalt the material mind, while the mental poisons of fear, anger, envy, jealousy, suspicion, and intolerance likewise tremendously interfere with the spiritual progress of the evolving soul.”
Physical poisons can manifest themselves very subtly in the mind of the personality by lack of courage, lack of direction, lack of coordination, lack of fidelity, lack of curiosity, lack of cooperation, lack of vigilance, lack of enthusiasm, nonchalance, indolence, impatience. The quest for perfection is never acquired, we must develop the enthusiasm, the spiritual dynamism of our personality, in order to remain vigilant against indolence. We must develop our spirit of courage in order to improve our life of righteousness, divine justice, mercy and forgiveness for our divine service. In spirituality, nothing is magic, the personality privileges to build a new vehicle without shortcuts. The UB tells us: [UB 75:8.5] “Never, in all your ascent to Paradise, will you gain anything by impatiently attempting to circumvent the established and divine plan by short cuts, personal inventions, or other devices for improving on the way of perfection, to perfection, and for eternal perfection.”
Mental poisons manifest themselves very subtly in all manner of personal behavior and negative attitudes toward relationships with other personalities. The personality has the responsibility to free itself from its deficiencies, through a dedication to correcting its character defects, and the UB confirms this: [UB 47:3.8] “Almost the entire experience of mansion world number one pertains to deficiency ministry. Survivors arriving on this first of the detention spheres present so many and such varied defects of creature character and deficiencies of mortal experience that the major activities of the realm are occupied with the correction and cure of these manifold legacies of the life in the flesh on the material evolutionary worlds of time and space.”
Mental poisons also concern fears. Fears can also be imaginary, illusory and unreal, by situations that have not happened and that may never happen. In order to free ourselves from them, we must examine them and be vigilant in finding valid and feasible solutions. A fear can be real by a physical danger that can harm our integrity. The best way to stabilize our mental and emotional imbalances is to withdraw for a while in order to practice a careful examination of ourselves in order to reach a certain emotional maturity. Through our personal experience, this habit of improvement in our personal life helps us to redefine our spiritual values.
Physical and mental poisons must be examined through impartial analysis. In this analysis, one must be loyal, authentic and honest with oneself. Our mental conflicts are internal to us and never come from outside, which is why it is essential to examine them in different situations or daily events in order to identify the facts as they are.
Forgiveness is the most difficult thing to learn and is the most profound indication that you are in touch with your Thought Adjuster. Through will, the personality is able to free itself from resentments and grudges crystallized around past injustices. Solutions must be found that are concrete, sensible, and connected to reality, without discrediting the people involved in our mental conflicts.
As we pursue this apprenticeship of improvement, this habituation eventually becomes imprinted upon our minds. It is a process for achieving the improvement of our relationship with that Divine Presence which spiritualizes our ideals of life. Thus, through intellectual tenacity, man assimilates and integrates moral values and spiritual meanings into his consciousness. Through repetition, our spiritual contact with the Thought Adjuster is made more rapidly. This choice must be voluntary, in a sincere desire to be in the image and likeness of the Universal Father.
Louise Dupuis
louisedupuis@sogetel.net
¶ Empathy and Leadership
JEREMY RIFKIN IN HIS BOOK, A New Consciousness for a World in Crisis, develops a theory based on results of behavioral analysis and neuroscience research: empathy, this intuitive capacity to recognize the feelings of others is innate.
She starts as a baby, but will be bullied, stifled by a guilt-inducing upbringing.
Our society erases this reality to only value power over others, of what is acquired to the detriment of others. This vision was largely theorized by Freud and ended up becoming obvious to many.
We would have been born to dominate, born to satisfy our immediate desires as closely as possible.
RIFKIN’s dense analysis clearly demonstrates this situation. We are born with the ability to identify with, to “feel” one another. How can this gift of empathy help us in our role as leaders?
Looking at Jesus’ behavior, we see how developed this gift was in him. We can guess that this is what allowed him, as a human, to read the needs of others and respond to them as best he could, as accurately as possible, always adapting to listening to the other.
So how could we develop this faculty that would help us find the right, non-standardized answer to the needs of our contemporaries?
Because if we can communicate information, we cannot communicate our experience. This is a bit of a human drama and we are confronted with it as “carriers” of a message. As long as we give ourselves this pretension.
But what if we also had something to learn from others? By reversing the relationship, we open the way to real exchanges and not to a “missionary” approach of conquest.
It is by multiplying the opportunities for exchange that we will avoid falling into a simple transposition of “commercial” behaviors into the spiritual domain, of inner development, which does not respond to the same rules.
It is unfortunately a fairly natural reflex to think: “since it works in one area it must give equally good results in another.”
But nothing could be further from the truth when we compare the domain that I will call “the spirit”, for want of a better term, and that of matter. The domain of eternal values and the transitory one that responds to the fleeting laws of gravity.
Because before having a preacher’s language, we must above all learn. Learn honesty, sincerity, learn to know ourselves, learn to recognize ourselves in the other: this is undoubtedly “learning to love him”. Learn to seek ourselves in the other. We must therefore create spaces that require these intercultural, interreligious exchanges.
May we, readers of the booklets, be examples of listening to others, wells of curiosity since eternity is offered to us, guides astonished by the path that is discovered before and within us in our experience.
To conclude, I will return to Jeremy RIFKIN’s analysis for whom this capacity for empathy actually represents the future of humanity, a milestone of civilization, a gift held back for too long. Let us imagine the place that our community of readers could take in our time of transition in order to accompany this change.
Let us be creative and inventive in our common future. Let us imagine new solutions.
Let us rediscover selfless altruism.
Dominique RONFET
French Readers Association
from the Urantia Book (AFLUB)
¶ Impressions of the theme
HELLO TO ALL OF YOU READERS of The Urantia Book. I am simply sharing with you my personal impressions of the thematic day of May 27 in Drummondville with the theme: Divine Language.
A very profitable day, through the way the two speakers Marc Belleau and Gaétan Charland expressed themselves, on the content of their presentations and the in-depth study of certain texts from The Urantia Book, followed by the sharing of the assistants, it was a big plus for me.
It feels good to meet people who have the same interest in advancing spiritually. There were 35 of us, attentive and in a good mood.
After dinner, it was time for the round tables, as they were already round, the ideas debated turned easily.
We found ourselves in a favorable climate to share our ideas and our findings on prayer, meditation, adoration, veneration and more…
The atmosphere was one of openness, friendship and collaboration. I returned home nourished with spirituality and joy.
All in all, it was a success and according to the host, Guy Laporte, it was not a meeting on the mark, but two marks above.
A big sincere thank you to all the organizers of this magnificent day, it was very much appreciated.
Ginette Kavanagh
¶ Medellin 2012
TO BECOMING AWARE OF THE place of “The Urantia Book” in our lives is to become aware of the place of the Father, the Adjuster.
I attended the 8th UAI International Congress in Medellin, Colombia, South America, April 28-May 1, 2012, with the theme “The Art of Teaching and Disseminating The Urantia Book.”
Three observations:
The global dimension of the scope of The Urantia Book. When I went to Chicago in 2011, this aspect of The Urantia Book did not appear to me with such force. Chicago is the home of The Urantia Book. It is therefore normal that there are all the activities that I saw there. Chicago is on the same continent as where I live (Quebec, Canada) and I felt like it was in my backyard.
On the other hand, to go to Medellin in Colombia, I took a 12 to 15 hour flight including crossing two borders. Once you arrive at your destination, you speak another language, you are immersed in another culture, you are somewhere else. I met friends from other countries and other continents that I had met in Chicago.
Paradoxically, the planet now seems smaller to me. Medellín is now in my backyard, because I went there.
Holding international conferences in different places on the planet is a good idea because it attracts people who live around those regions. It “decentralizes people’s involvement” in the activities of The Urantia Book. It further roots those regions in the movement. It uncovers unsuspected potentials of those regions. Out of 150 participants, about 72% came from South and Central America, of which 57% of the participants came from Colombia.
For people who travel to these regions, it reveals the planetary dimension of the book. It also highlights the dimension of “their own involvement”. It reveals that there are many more similarities than differences between us seekers of truth. It makes us draw on planetary knowledge in order to help each other. It is an ideal time to take stock of our regional and individual evolution.
I was able to converse one-on-one with people from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Spain, Peru, Dominican Republic, Russia, England, USA, Africa (Nigeria, Cameroon, Malawi, Senegal), Colombia (Barranquilla, Bogota, Boyaca, Cali, Medellín, Monteria, Santander). My only regret is not having been able to speak Spanish to be able to interact intimately with those who only spoke Spanish. So I decided to learn Spanish.
Second observation: The two levels of exchange in this type of meeting.
There are the speeches centered on the theme and there are the individual contacts, one on one, between personalities. It is clear that it is mainly the latter that remains in our memory when we return home.
It is as if the activities were only on the surface, as a support for something more essential behind all that. This does not take away the importance of the conferences that take place at the intellectual level and set the tone for our future targeted research and orientations. I realize that the more intellectual a presentation is, the less likely it is to be remembered by the participants. And that conversely, the more personal a presentation is (transmitted directly by the soul and the personality), the more it will be remembered by the participants. On the other hand, these same activities must not be neglected. Participants must constantly feel confident and well supported. Organization must not be a concern for them. They must be able to “surrender to interpersonality” with their souls at peace. While the intellect is reassured, the soul can work to grow.
Which brings me to my third observation. During these congresses, we feel a type of underlying energy that prevails in all interpersonal exchanges. It is gentle and strong at the same time. It is love. But not just any kind of love. The love I am talking about originates beyond sentimentality, beyond psychology and beyond the mind. It takes into account the potential for immortality of the being, its journey into eternity.
Could it be that this type of love has its origin beyond spirituality in the Adjuster, in the divine spark within us? I leave the question open.
Love has a “driving” force. It is the basis of all relationships between personalities. It can be seen as having a certain “density”, something “tangible”, “substantial”. Becoming aware of the love that inhabits us increases its force tenfold, because from that moment on, it can be taken charge of by the personality.
I come out of this congress feeling grown up.
Thanks to the organizers.
Normand Laperle
Levis, Quebec
nlap@videotron.ca
¶ AUQ 2012 ACTIVITY CALENDAR
STUDY GROUP HOSTS MEETING
Saturday August 11
Location to be determined
Picnic, Michael’s Party
Sunday August 19
Angrignon Park in Ville La Salle
Holiday Brunch
Sunday December 2nd
Best Western Hotel St-Jérôme
¶ STUDY GROUPS
THIS ACTIVITY ALLOWS MULTIPLE READERS OF DIFFERENT LEVELS OF UNDERSTANDING TO SHARE AND STUDY THE TEACHINGS OF The Urantia Book TOGETHER. It promotes spiritual progress by enabling its participants to find practical applications of the teachings of The Urantia Book in their daily lives. This important practice helps to maintain a broad perspective on concepts of truth.
You wish to participate or form a study group; we will be happy to assist you. If you wish to have your study group appear in this list, contact the person in charge, via email association.urantia.quebec@gmail.com or at 450-565-3323.
Group: Découverte
Every Monday from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Laurentians Region Gaétan Charland and Line St-Pierre
Tel.: 450-565-3323
Group: Étoile du Soir
Every Wednesday from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Laurentides region
Carmen Charland
Tel.: 450-553-3601
Group: Le Pont
Every Thursday from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
South Shore of Montreal
Guy Vachon
Tel.: 450-465-7049
Group: Mauricie Readers
Every Monday from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Three Rivers Region
Madeleine Boisvert and
Tel: 819-376-8850
Roger Perigny
819-379-5768
Group: Veritas
Every Tuesday from 7:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Montreal area, near the Church metro station
Lise and Pierre Routhier
Tel.: 514-761-2378
Sherbrooke Group
Every two weeks, Tuesday or Wednesday (to be confirmed)
From 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Helene Boisvenue or Denis Gravelle
Tel.: 819 569-6416
Group: The Ascendants
Every two weeks on Sunday from 13 h 00 to 3:30 p.m.
South Shore of Quebec
Guy LeBlanc
Tel: 418-835-1809
Group: The Agondontarians
Every two weeks on Sunday from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. North Shore of Quebec
Guy & Rolande L. Martin
Tel: 418-651-3851
Group: Les Débonnaires
Wednesdays from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Montreal region
Julien Audet
Tel: 514-315-9871
Group: Urantia Fraternity
Wednesdays from 7:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Lanaudière region
Richard Landry & Gisèle Boisjoly
Tel: 450-589-6922
Group: Vers les Sommets
Friday from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Regions Ormstown & Valleyfield
Louise Sauve
Tel: 450-829-3631
Group: The United Urantia Family
Monday from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Montreal region
Mrs. Diane Labrecque
Tel: 514-277-2308
The Partners of the Supreme
Monday from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Quebec region
Richard Lachance
Tel: (418) 614-2520 or (418) 933-0244 (cell)
At Maisonia
Every two weeks on Monday from 7:15 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Quebec region
Gilles Bertrand & Louise Renaud
Tel: 418-871-4564
Group: Uni-Terre
Every Sunday from 9:00 a.m.
Lanaudière region
Eric Martel
Tel: 450-756-9387
Group: Laurantia
Every Sunday from 9:00 a.m.
Petite Nation region in Outaouais
Denise Charron & Jean-Claude Lafreniere
Tel: 819-983-2113
Group: The Precursors of Divine Reality
Every two weeks on Tuesday from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Laurentides region
Mrs. Johanne Séguin
Tel: 819-327-3237
Group: Sans Frontiére
Sunday from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 a.m.
Hawkesbury region
Yvon and Irene Belle-Isle
Tel: 613-632-5706
Group: from Outaouais
Sunday from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Ottawa Region
Maurice Migneault
Tel: 613-789-6833
Disclaimer: Any interpretations, opinions, conclusions or artistic representations, stated or implied, are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of Urantia Association International or local and national level associations.